


Everything Has Beauty, but Not Everyone Sees It, or Hears It

by colisahotnorthernmess



Category: Find It Fix It Flog It RPF
Genre: Falling Into Someone's Arms Literally, First Kiss, First Time, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Romance, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 19:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18644671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colisahotnorthernmess/pseuds/colisahotnorthernmess
Summary: "Do you know - the intrinsic difference between you and I..." Si told him, "...is demonstrated in this ten-foot here.""Why?""Because you were drawn to them immediately, weren't you? Lockers. And you actually walked across things of beauty to get there," he pointed to the obscenely tall, curved beams beneath their feet, "This looks like a deconstructed barn of some kind. This is going to be elm. This is beautiful."Based on the episode from which these lines were quoted. Henry sees beauty in those metal lockers and Si sees beauty in those long elm beams, but what they don't realise - is the beauty they see in each other. However, when Si trips on the planks and falls straight into Henry's arms, he finds himself a lot closer to Henry's beauty than he expects.





	Everything Has Beauty, but Not Everyone Sees It, or Hears It

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this is a work of fiction involving real people written by myself - it is a completely made-up fantasy and is in no way intended to cause offence.

"Now _these_ are nice, up here," Henry smiled, a spark in his eye as he noticed the large metal cupboards, uneasily perched on mounds of scrap.

"What?"

"These lockers. I've always wanted to do something with lockers," he nervously stepped aboard the planks and whatnot that was wedged beneath them, and started to walk across them like a tightrope walker - doing his best impression of a gymnast as he tried to get from one side to the other. "You could just blast these," he said, finally reaching them, "Paint them a funky colour."

He looked forward to bamboozling Guy with all of his fancy colour names - he rather liked the idea of suggesting 'anthracite', which is, in fact, _grey_ to you and me. That _was_ if Guy could ever tear his eyes away from the saucy pictures of 80's pin-up Sam Fox they would come to find stuck all over the inside of the doors. "Come on, mate - look," he tried his best to convince Simon, "The louvres. That gives a bit of period vibe to it."

"Do you know - the intrinsic difference between you and I..." Si told him, "...is demonstrated in this ten-foot here."

"Why?"

"Because you were drawn to them immediately, weren't you? _Lockers_. And you actually walked across things of beauty to get there," he pointed to the obscenely tall, curved beams beneath their feet, "This looks like a deconstructed barn of some kind. This is going to be elm. This is _beautiful_."

It encapsulated their loves and likes perfectly, and their _differences_ : Henry gravitating towards a great hulking object of steel, with his obsession in all things metal and mechanical, and Simon preferring the organic material on which his friend was stood - wood. Henry was one for machines with churning parts, pistons pushing and shoving, steam and petrol getting things moving and, if Henry had been around in olden times, thought Simon - he probably would have been a madcap inventor or an engineer, always _creating_ \- always pushing forward into the future. Whereas Si was more relaxed, more composed, and his love of wood and the trees from which it was sourced, only proved to be further validation of that notion - for Simon was a bit of a _hippy_ , if truth be told.

But, with said items lying side by side like this, the scenario also helped to capture some of Henry and Simon's _similarities_ too - their shared love of _beauty_ and, furthermore, the beauty in reclaimed items.

Which was why Simon had brought them _here_ , to this reclamation yard. Even if Cole did sometimes scoff at O'Brien's chosen barns, due to the lack of motorbikes _usually_ , he did secretly love these sorts of places - because they were an absolute goldmine of undiscovered _beauty_. And, where Henry may have fallen in love with this old locker - rust and all - with vines growing through the slats - and, Simon may have been fawning over these beams, which were the length of a double-decker bus and probably too long to be anything useful - the one unacknowledged example of beauty in all of this was the beauty they found when they looked at each other.

A question had to be asked: how could two people, over the course of several years, long so _desperately_ to kiss and to touch, and neither of them know how the other one feels? Because, although the pair of them chatted non-stop, during filming, during long drives in the Land Rover, and they spoke aplenty - they never really _said_  what their hearts wanted to say. But, sometimes, the eyes can wordlessly say it _all_ \- they can give a person away. And, when Si stepped up onto the beams and one of his trainers became caught in a crevice, he tripped and stumbled forward, thrusting Henry back and into the silver cupboard. It clanged, cacophonically, and the pair were mortified with embarrassment at the thought that the noise would draw attention to themselves like _this_ , wrapped in each other's arms.

Whilst an onlooker - a member of the crew or, say, Pete, the owner of today's location - may have seen this as an innocent scene, easily excusable given the circumstances of one person simply falling over, the pair of them knew the truth - and they could see it in one another's _eyes_. In fact, so trained on one another's eyes they were, that they had barely even noticed that the other one was blushing until the redness of the face had reached the very upper cheekbones. They were blushing because _they_ had been caught out - by _each other_.

"Oh... I'm... Sorry," Si's voice trembled.

"S'Alright," came a near-soundless reply. Henry never took his gaze off of Simon, who, by this point was beginning to bow his head, breaking eye contact. The older man slid a hand, now gloveless, around his co-host's neck, tracing the protrusion of the collar bone with his thumb as his dipped below the entrance of his sweater, brown beneath a cream-coloured cardigan. "I said, Si," and suddenly the grey-haired presenter looked up at him, "That it's alright. I _know_." He grazed fingernails gently along the side of Simon's face - and, in return, a bare hand now began to run along his beard, almost as if Si was testing the waters and wanted to know how harsh it would feel against his skin, were he to kiss him right now.

Henry hoped that Si had come to the conclusion that it _wouldn't_ be too rough, because he was bloody well kissing him and that was that; he didn't know how much longer he'd be able to hold himself steady on these beams without falling off.

It was as if it was something they had been waiting for forever, and Henry quickly forgot all about the locker, even though his back was pressed up against it, his gilet riding up against the cold polished surface - and Simon soon forgot all about the wood, even though the pair of them were balancing on it, precariously and set to fall, with only the purchase they had on one another's lips to keep them upright - and upright it would _easily_ keep them, as it felt as though they were rising to heaven, hardly touching the ground.

"Oh God, Simon... I've always--" he gasped, as their lips parted. But, before he could finish, Si was hushing him with a sole finger, buttoning his mouth closed.

"I know you like to ramble on," came an explanation, between shallow, ragged breaths, "And so do I. But I think some things... are _better_ without words." And Henry solemnly nodded.

For a minute, they merely stared at one another, their breathing steadily returning to normal, and a smile forming on both of their lips which couldn't have been wiped off with even the most potent of cleaning products. And all that could be heard was the rubber soles of their shoes scuffling against the wood as they tried to remain standing in the same position, the birds tweeting cheerfully in the background, and agricultural equipment at work in nearby fields.

"I see..." Cole began, whispering, "So... do you think that _many_ of the world's pre-eminent philosophers come from Liverpool? Or is it just you?"

"Bugger off," Simon swore at him, with a smirk. "I was just trying to enjoy the moment without you diving in and ruining it - comparing our kiss to the time you rode so-and-so motorbike across the Himalayas, to meet the Dalai Lama, or whatever you've bloody done."

"Me and the Dalai are like that," Henry grinned, crossing his fingers to imply that the pair were close. "It's why I'm so chill, man - it's why I'm so zen." The two men laughed at Henry doing his 'Henry thing' so well. "It takes a lot to get me riled," he started, and the less said about his and Guy's argument over that ship's wheel, the better. "But _you_... get me all worked up," he declared, clutching Simon by his behind and urging him forwards, hands which were curious and didn't know what to grab first, caressing jeans, one hand sandwiched in a back pocket and the other working on his zip. He teasingly pulled the contraption downwards, opening Si's fly, before stroking hardness through his boxers.

O'Brien moaned. "Oh, so _you're_ allowed to make noises," Cole chided him.

"We... can't," Simon's moan slowly morphed into a grunt.

"Aww," Henry whimpered.

"It's... too.. dangerous," and, as Si spoke the words, the seemingly stable closet toppled backwards and nearly to the ground. Because of its height, it became wedged against the wall of the shed, with two lucky, though still rather lustful, men lying on it, and lying on _top_ of one another, with Henry bearing the weight of his mate. "See?" Si choked, nearly winded.

 _"There is always danger for those who are afraid,"_ the words were quoted, through strained vocal cords.

"Dalai Lama?" came the query.

"George Bernard Shaw, actually. How about: _There is beauty in everything around us, even grubby little Scousers who take all of the best items for themselves,_ " he managed.

"Tolstoy? He was a _fine_ old Liverpudlian philosopher," said Simon, sarcastically.

"You're gorgeous, you know that?"

"Who said _that_ ?" the younger presenter clambered from his lover, struggling to push himself off of the lockers and trying to regain footing amongst the elm beams.

"Henry Cole," he smiled, his eyes once again meeting with Simon's. "It's a line from a book he's been working on, where two men rummage around in sheds and fall in love."


End file.
